1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to providing an electronic order confirmation in an electronic transaction. More particularly, the present invention relates to providing an electronic order confirmation comprising an entitled price and an estimated date of delivery from a private electronic environment to a public electronic environment.
2. Background Information
Electronic transactions involving the purchase of various goods and services have steadily increased with the popularity and use of public electronic environments, such as, for example, global computer networks (e.g., the INTERNET). Among the biggest participants in such electronic transactions for goods are large businesses that typically make volume purchases. These types of companies tend to negotiate price discounts with one or more sellers of goods they need. Such negotiated prices are referred to herein as the “entitled price,” which is the price a buyer is entitled to for a given item based on an entitlement, such as, for example, a contract with the seller or a promotional offer from the seller (e.g., a coupon) or a program with a business partner of the seller (e.g., “point” programs similar to airline mileage programs).
Due to the number of and differences among the various entitlements for various customers of a given electronic merchant, the calculation of an entitled price is no trivial matter, let alone doing so while the customer waits. Also, where made-to-order and out-of-stock items are desired, it has proven to be problematic for electronic merchants to identify with any degree of certainty a date of delivery for the goods while the buyer is still in the shopping session, without resorting to chaotic behind-the-scenes manual intervention. The information needed to calculate the entitled price and the estimated date of delivery, among other things, typically resides in a private electronic environment, such as, for example, a secure computer or computer network housing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application. ERP applications are large, expensive and complex computer programs that track massive volumes of data (e.g., base prices, customers, contracts, inventory levels, manufacturing schedules, delivery schedules, price rules, tax conditions, etc.), and calculate, among other things, an entitled price and/or an estimated date of delivery. Due to the sensitive nature of such information, both for the buyer and the seller, ERP applications have not been made accessible from public electronic environments for security reasons.
It has been suggested that commerce sites simply develop their pricing engines to provide an entitled price and/or an estimated date of delivery. However, since the key data resides with the ERP application, such engines would require that the data be kept current in more than one location. Such a situation could result in a price and/or delivery date provided to the buyer that is different from the price/delivery date ultimately returned, for example, if a base price update has not yet been made for the engine. Worse, for example, some commerce sites will actually go offline to calculate the entitled price and send it back to buyer, making it appear to the buyer to be automatically generated. This practice, known as “rip and read” can also lead to inaccuracies, due to time constraints and human error. Such confusion causes various problems for the large buyers, not the least of which are budgeting and scheduling deployment of new equipment, and serves only to reduce the credibility of the electronic merchant.
Thus, a need exists for a way to provide an electronic confirmation of an order, including an accurate entitled price and a reliable estimated date of delivery, in an electronic transaction.